26.2393, Review: Discourse; Ling & Literature; Pragmatics: Moore (2014)

Thu May 7 19:36:33 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-2393. Thu May 07 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.2393, Review: Discourse; Ling & Literature; Pragmatics: Moore (2014)

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Date: Thu, 07 May 2015 15:36:16
From: Jessie Sams [samsj at sfasu.edu]
Subject: Quoting Speech in Early English

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-1959.html

AUTHOR: Colette  Moore
TITLE: Quoting Speech in Early English
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Jessie Sams, Stephen F. Austin State University

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

Colette Moore’s book is a study in the methods of marking reported speech in
early English and the meanings those markings provided texts; it is organized
into an introduction and three chapters. Moore’s investigation is
interdisciplinary, crossing into fields such as textual analysis, stylistics,
literature, history, and, of course, linguistics.

The introduction begins with definitions of terminology used when studying
reported speech, including the term ‘reported speech’ itself, which she
defines as “the intrusion of the voice (spoken or written) of one speaker or
writer into the discourse of another” (2). By introducing problems with and
potential ambiguities of terminology as it is used in past literature, she
establishes her uses of terms as they apply to her current study. Moore also
discusses how editing alters the text and its original meaning and how
punctuation is especially vulnerable to these edits; in fact, she writes that
“quotation marks change our reading experience” (10).

Following the introduction, the three chapters of Moore’s book address Holt
and Clift’s (2007) three primary focuses for research on reported speech: “the
forms of reported discourse, the authenticity or accuracy of it, and the ways
that it is used” (16).

In Chapter 1, Moore’s first goal is to explore how medieval writers marked
direct speech and how those markings created an additional layer of meaning
for the text. In order to achieve her goal, she uses both large corpora
searches with quantitative data and close analyses of texts for a qualitative
analysis. Using a variety of types of texts, Moore demonstrates that scribal
markings were not consistent and differed across texts, including the use of
marginalia, mise-en-page, and ink color to mark direct reported speech. After
discussing the inconsistency of these markings, Moore writes that “an author
who wanted to be sure that a passage of direct speech was clearly marked was
obliged to indicate these switches through the discourse itself” (43). With
that statement, she dives into an investigation of the lexical verb choice to
mark a switch in speaker (i.e., the quoting verb or quotative clause). In this
chapter, she also includes a study on grammaticalization to demonstrate that
quotatives are linguistic features that have gone through periods of
grammaticalization: The quotative was auxiliary to the rest of the sentence
with its primary purpose to indicate a switch in speaker--not to provide
semantic information pertinent to the clause. In fact, Moore argues that the
quotative becomes grammaticalized to a point that it is used like punctuation
(66). She further points out that using punctuation to mark direct reported
speech was not common until after the introduction of the printing press and
that the use of quotation marks as we know them today was not widely used
until the 1800s.

In the second chapter, Moore explores what she calls the “faithfulness
expectation” (82), which is the reader’s expectation that what appears between
quotation marks (or within the marked reported speech) is a word-for-word
replication of what the original speaker said. She argues that the expectation
for a verbatim replication is a modern convention and that medieval writers’
“practices of quotation are not always exact and, far from being surprised by
this, writers and readers seemed to anticipate and expect this imprecision”
(85). By analyzing three different genre of texts (defamation depositions,
sermons, and historical chronicles), she finds that generic expectations
competed with the faithfulness expectation so much that writers followed
generic conventions, even if it meant losing the precise wording of the
original utterance.

In Chapter 3, Moore explores the literary genre, focusing on how authors
marked direct and indirect speech, especially focusing on the ambiguities
created by blending aspects of direct and indirect speech. She focuses on
three authors (Chaucer, Langland, and the anonymous author of the British
Library, Cotton Nero A.x. manuscript), analyzing texts from those authors
according to three features: “the ways that modes of speech marking are used
in the poems, the ways that editors of modern editions of these poems have
added interpretive levels of punctuation to speech marking, and the effect
that this practice has had upon our reading of the texts” (133). She repeats
her opening argument from the book: adding punctuation to these texts changes
the way in which we approach, read, and ultimately understand the text as a
whole.

EVALUATION

The book is intended for and perhaps best appreciated by scholars of
historical works (both literary and non-fiction works), as well as scholars
within the field of quotatives (especially written quotatives). While it may
be able to serve as a text for an advanced graduate seminar, the book is
perhaps best used as research material for independent scholars. The style of
the writing, including the frequent use of Latin-based terminology, could
hinder beginning students or scholars, especially if they are unfamiliar with
the types of terminology she uses (e.g., de dicto, de re, ordinatio,
auctores). However, for scholars familiar with the terms (or for scholars
willing to master them), her work is a valuable source of information, as its
interdisciplinary approach is illuminating.

The book’s three chapters read as three different studies, all of which
examine separate issues within a larger context. So while the book can be read
as one whole, readers could easily focus on one of the three chapters without
needing to read the others for background information first. However, readers
may find it helpful to first read the introduction, as it provides a
foundation of her work, regardless of whether they intend to read all three
chapters of the text.

Within the quantitative analyses of the large corpora searches, there are some
methodological issues, some of which she also points out. For instance, she
searches corpora of Middle English and also corpora of modern English
(including fiction, non-fiction, and news writing) for open quotation marks
that are followed by a character, which means her search results could have
included double hits for the same quotation, such as the example in (1):

(1) “We seriously debated whether we were going to bother coming back for  
our seventh year,” said George brightly, “now that we’ve got —” (Rowling
2003:227)

The open quotation marks in front of both ‘we’ and ‘now’ would have triggered
results for her search, though it is only a single quotation. Furthermore, she
notes the number of times direct speech occurs without a quotative (those
instances are also referred to as null quotatives) but does not distinguish
among the different types of null quotatives. For instance, the example in (2)
would also have provided two hits for her search:

(2) “—now that we’ve got our O.W.L.s,” George said hastily. “I mean, do we
really need N.E.W.T.s?” (Rowling 2007:227)

In this case, the open quotation marks before ‘I’ marks a continuation of
dialogue and while that could technically be identified as a null quotative,
it is different from those instances of quotation that have no outward marking
of a switch in speaker.

Also potentially problematic are examples where direct and indirect speech are
woven together, thus separating an open quotation mark from a verb of
speaking, which is a common feature of news writing.

(3) Rev. Leon Kelly, executive director of Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives, 
 said the police count of gang homicides this year “does not include the open
cases, unsolved cases that have gang overtones.” (Rocky Mountain News 2007)

Her definition of quotations occurring without a quotative is that “no verb of
speaking occurred within the nearby onset of speech” (58), which may indicate
that examples like (3) would have been marked as having no quotative even
though the verb ‘say’ is present. While she may have considered some of these
problems while searching through the data, she does not provide examples or
specify how she handled them. Her short foray into modern written quotatives
felt a bit misplaced in her thorough study of quotatives in early English.

In the larger picture, these methodological issues recede into the background
as she moves on to her much stronger analyses, in which she focuses on
providing qualitative analyses of early English texts; the qualitative
analyses serve as the foundation for the majority of the study and have an
impressive scope. She uses these analyses to demonstrate that “[p]unctuation
can either facilitate the sense of a sentence, or assign a different sense to
it. It aids in the conveyance of meaning and creates meaning of itself” (8).

She also uses the analyses to portray the differences between quotations as
they were used in early English writing and our expectations as modern
readers, where the markings of reported speech were more likely used to mark
“the truth of the passage” rather than the “interposition of another voice”
(42). In these ways, she achieves the goals she laid out for her study: She
demonstrates that “[e]ditorial quotation marks change our reading practices in
significant ways” (180) and that “[b]y acknowledging the subtle ways in which
medieval writers used their own systems of speech marking, we can come to a
richer sense and a deeper appreciation of their written legacy” (185).

She begins with a bold statement that her research is one of a kind; she then
uses the introduction to place her work in a variety of traditions in order to
show that it is, indeed, unique. The material within the book covers such a
variety of fields that it is difficult (if not impossible) to find a single
work to compare it with; as a sampling of areas covered, Moore discusses
grammaticalization of quotatives, textual analysis, literary study through a
linguistic lens, genre conventions and expectations, and historical
pragmatics. As she herself writes, “there has been no full study of the
methods of reporting speech in pre-modern English” (1). Moore’s study
certainly provides a strong analysis to begin filling that gap.

REFERENCES

Holt, Elizabeth, and Rebecca Clift (eds). 2007. Reporting talk: Reported
speech in interaction. Cambridge University Press.

Rocky Mountain News. Nov 2007. http://www.rockymountainnews.com

Rowling, J.K. 2003. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. New York:
Scholastic, Inc.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jessie Sams is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Stephen F. Austin
State University. Her primary research interests include the interface of
syntax and semantics, especially the intersection of the two within written
English quotatives; history of the English language and English etymology; and
constructed languages.

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